Scientists to Congress: This Summer's Extreme Weather Was Caused by Climate Change

Scientists to Congress, testifying on the latest climate science: "It is critical to understand that the link between climate change and the kinds of extremes that lead to disaster is clear."

That's Christopher Field, a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and director of global ecology at the Carnegie Institute for Science, according to the Guardian. "There is no doubt that climate has changed. There is also no doubt that a changing climate changes the risks of extremes, including extremes that can lead to disaster."

That'd be Senator Jim Inhofe, still resolutely denying the possibility that manmade greenhouse gas emissions are trapping extra heat in the atmosphere and screwing with the earth's climate. He, and many other Congressmen, still maintain that climate science is either "unsettled" or even a "hoax." And they are running our government. One GOP congressman, Alabama's Jeff Sessions, went so far as to say he was "offended" by the suggestion that climate scientists have reached a similar consensus around the fact that human activity is causing the world to warm as lung cancer researchers have that cigarettes cause cancer. Which, of course, they have.

All told, it was a disastrous day that played out like the disastrous tape loop we've been running over for the last three years in American climate policy: